reviews

First edition tends to be directly tied with the World in Flames boardgame (making it harder to implement). This gives a good overview of the buildup to war, but requires some tinkering for classroom use.

Introduction to Japanese feudal culture, nice components with a modernish yet Japanese style.

This requires one of two things-->money to purchase ship miniatures -OR- time, which can be used to xerox/create ship silhouettes. For a classroom budget, silhouettes are probably more efficient, and students could even be assigned creating the silhouettes, researching ships, etc. before playing. For an added twist, anyone who has a ship sunk has to have their assignment torn up! This recreates hesitation at throwing ships in to battle willy-nilly and creates a very realistic hesitation.

Covers all planes in Europe. Card game requiring strategy. Good to show superiority of jets, vulnerability of bombers. Definitely can see the progression in technology from 1939 to 1945. It is also possible to play a hand “solo” to learn the rules before explaining them to students.

The rules are ok while the supplements have good information on Japan's feudal system. The advantage is the rules are simple. The disadvantage is that it requires having little figurines (although using Risk pieces work).

Best use would be to research Arthurian values, etc. and let students create knights based on those values following this up with an adventure of their own. Pendragon is very thorough and true to Arthurian legends and medieval culture. It is a lot of work to use this, but it also has a correspondingly big payoff if successful. Good to use with “Le Morte d’Artur” or “The Green Knight”

Great for religion class, goes from Joshua to David. This could be a touchy game for a public school class as the game is very Christian-oriented. Otherwise, this is Settlers of Catan.

This is a role-playing game and free-form. It explores the horror mythos of H.P. Lovecraft which inspired Stephen King and other writers. References to Cthulhu are quite frequent, including Arkham Asylum in the Batman cartoon series.

Hard to bring a game to class with the name "Cheapass" on it. If used, whiteout the references and then play. Low quality components won't stand up to prolonged use.

Not a normally covered area. Hard to get lots of students involved. “the Columbia block games" all use similar systems, so familiarity with one WILL make the others much easier as well.